


After; Always

by galateaGalvanized



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drug Withdrawal, F/M, Intercrural Sex, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 05:22:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15066065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galateaGalvanized/pseuds/galateaGalvanized
Summary: Matthias Helvar had promised Nina that he would stay until the end, and Matthias Helvar kept his promises.





	After; Always

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: explicit descriptions of drug withdrawal.

The withdrawal symptoms came in waves as strong and fickle as those made by any Tidemaker, and they worsened as the hours ticked by.  Nina's courage lasted through the fourth hour, at which point she barely reacted to his hand on her forehead, his hand on her hand. She could barely move, and her breath whistled through her teeth like gusts of air ripping across the glaciers of Fjerda.

 She was shivering, skin covered in sweat, hair matted to her forehead in frizzing curls. “I don't want you to see me like this,” she'd said.  She wasn't saying anything, any more. It hurt worse to think of her as unable to care about her appearance than as anything but flawlessly put-together.  She curled in on herself, as if trying to curl into nothing, a mimic of the Djel snake seeking to consume itself at the end of the world. She, who was always so loud, larger than life, who had so much presence, the center of every room--it hurt so much to see her try to be small.  He gathered her shaking body into his arms at long last, when her convulsing was strong enough that he worried she might break something, might shatter a tooth, might concuss herself against the low ceiling of the hold. He climbed onto the table himself and held her through the seizures, feeling her power roil out of her and into him.

The effects of her magic came in starts and stops; she seemed overwhelmed by it, the clarity and vision the parem granted seemed uncoupled to its sheer power.  Her control was lost somewhere in the shadows of the rough-hewn deck, and he felt the untamed magic rip through him whenever she cried out in the face of some new terror.  He felt his heart slow, his skin heat, watched his fingernails grow inches long before shrinking back to nothing, then slowly growing back. He thought he felt his bones grind together where he held her, fingers fusing into solid pieces of ivory and back into working fingers.  For a long, long few seconds, he would have sworn his heart had stopped.

"Always," he whispered as he rocked her. "And after." He thought, _I was made to protect you_.

She had brief periods of lucidity that were almost worse than the spasms.

"Matthias, please," she begged, eyes glassy and unseeing.  "Please, just a little more. Just a little more parem, please.  I'll do whatever you want. I promise."

He pressed a cup of water to her bottom lip, tilting her head up to get her to drink. She had sweated clear through her shirt, and her skin was waxy with dehydration.

"Of course, Nina, here you go," he said, and she sipped slowly before weakly trying to push him away.  "Drink this, and i'll get some _parem_ ," he said. The lie was more difficult even than those he told Brum, but then, as now, there was little he would not try for her sake.

She took another few gulps of water, and glanced up at him pleadingly. "Now?" she said, and he desperately shook his head. She turned in his arms, spilling the water down her damp shirt. Her eyes glistened as she lowered her eyelids, her mouth curled into a sly smile. His breath caught in his throat, heart beating fast through no compulsion of grisha magic.  

"Oh, please.  I mean it. I’ll do _whatever_ you want," she said.  She shifted her weight to press against him, and her hips locked perfectly with his own. It was something he'd dreamed of, too often, and to have it offered here--like this--it was a poison that burned him from the inside out.  It was all he could to continue shaking his head.

Her gaze soured, angry, with the same passion in her eyes that he had come to treasure. As much as it scared him, it gave him his first hint of hope.

"You're a liar, Matthias Helvar," she spat, and he felt a violent tremor shake his heart.  He wrapped his arms around her more tightly, crushing her arms to her chest, wondering if his druskelle tricks would even work against a grisha on _parem_.  His heart struggled in his ribs until, at last, her strength gave way, and she collapsed against his chest as if her bones had been washed away by Djel.  "You're a liar, Matthias Helvar," she repeated through her tears. He held her through her wracking sobs as he'd held her through everything else.

He pressed gentle kisses into her sweat-damp hair, humming old Fjerdan lullabies that he barely remembered from his childhood.  Their faint melodies didn't sting so much any more.

By the seventh hour, she had quieted, hiccuping into his shirt, still shivering.  Matthias thought that she had finally worn herself down more than that the _jurda parem_ had worked its way free.  By the seventh hour, she was begging for something else entirely.

"Just k-k-kill me." her fingers were wrapped so tightly in his shirt that it would take a Fabrikator to separate them.  Her voice was a soft rasp, and she spoke in lilting Ravkan that was hard to understand. "I'd d-deserve it," she said, and he felt colder than he ever had in the waters of Fjerda. "And I'd rather it were you."

"I can't," he said, and he kept saying it, even as his voice began to break.  He was petting her hair, the sweat-tangled nest of it a far cry from her usual glamorous waves.  Her hands were curled into rigid claws, and she used them to paw at his sternum as if trying to burrow into him.  His mind spiraled back to that first night on the shore, both of them drenched in seawater and on the edge of death.  Her cold, clammy skin--her warm laughter--the fire in her eyes as she had all but dared him to survive. That fire was a damp ember now, the manic fever broken.  

In the eight hour, her shivering peaked and, terrifyingly, started to subside.  Her sweat was evaporating into the thin air of the hold, and her soaked clothing clung to the curves of her exhausted body.  He'd seen this sort of thing before: the first signs of deathly hypothermia.  Matthias blushed fiercely before locking his emotions behind the wall he'd crafted to become a druskelle, and rapidly stripped off his shirt.

There were a few hammocks hanging in the hold; there wasn't nearly enough space for all of the crew to have cabins. The worst storms could require nearly non-stop rotating shifts, and the hold hammocks provided a safe place to grab a few hours of sleep between work on deck.  For the moment, they'd provide a safe place for Nina to get warm again.

It pained him to leave her, but went to throw a pelt down onto the nearest hammock, put two more in easy reach, and hurried back.  She had curled into a ball on the medical table again, looking like one of the gray rolling bugs common to Ketterdam soils. He pressed two fingers to her neck to find her pulse present but thready, and he felt her teeth chatter where his hand touched her bottom jaw.

"Nina, love," he said, shoring up the wall that held his emotions. "I need to take your shirt off. Where's that Ravkan vulgarity when i need it, hm?"

She didn't answer; he wasn't even sure if she heard him.  He allowed himself a single pang of longing for one of her sly come-ons and set to work.  Mechanically, medically, he stripped himself and her to bare skin, then carried her over to the hammock he had set up. He distributed their weight carefully across the nets as he climbed up, muscles straining to keep them stable, and pulled the remaining pelts over them at last. He felt as if he were seconds from overheating, but her breathing seemed to ease into a steadier rhythm against his chest.

She had survived nine hours so far.  Infinity seemed to stretch ahead of them in the darkness, and Matthias clutched her even more tightly to him.  He would make sure there was an "after". He would make sure there was an "always".

Matthias was almost scared to sleep, scared to stop looking at her for even a second, but he hadn't had an ounce of rest since they'd returned from the White Island.  His adrenaline had worn off hours ago, and it was desperation alone keeping him awake. He didn't even notice that he'd dropped off until he felt Nina rocking on top of him.  His mind broke through the deep fug of sleep to the awful sound of her dry-heaving, her cramped muscles fighting to keep her upright through her convulsions.

He sat up as much as he could, shifting her until they were both on their sides on the hammock.  She kept heaving, tears streaking down her face, and it was all he could do to brush her hair behind her ears and shush her.  

"I'm sorry, Zoya," she said, between heaves.  Her eyes were glassy again. "I can't make it stop. I keep seeing their faces."

Zoya?  Zoya Nazyalensky?  He remembered her stories of the woman, the legend and, apparently, foster mother.  "Whose faces, Nina?"

She gasped for breath and turned to look at him, obviously still lost.  "I'll get better, I promise. Please. Don't leave me alone."

The curve of her cheek fit like a warm peach in his palm, and he stroked a thumb along her cheekbone.  "Never again," he said, and her eyes seemed to focus.

"Matthias?" she said, bringing a hand up to cover his.  For a second, she seemed to be lucid once more. "Oh, Matthias.  I'm glad it's you."

He smiled at her, helplessly, and kept watch as her eyelids closed again.

Afterwards, they slept in fits and starts.  The sun rose in the morning, its pink light barely visible through the slanted windows of the hold.  That light turned gold, then yellow, then reddened again. Once, when Matthias awake from another doze, he saw a tray of hard bread and dried meat laid out for them on the hold's floor.  Two water pitchers were placed in front of it, positioned in such a caring yet threatening way that he knew they were from Inej. He rolled Nina to the side again and carefully emerged from their cocoon of pelts, aware of his nakedness in a way he hadn't been before.  He tugged his discarded pants on from the night before but stopped short when he heard a low, cocksure whistle.

"Robbing me of dinner and a show, Matthias?" he heard.  Tired blue eyes peaked out at him from beneath the furs, but she was smiling.  "How could you be so heartless to someone so infirm?"

He was overjoyed to hear her voice such that he forgot to be embarrassed, and he felt an unwitting smile slip, triumphant, onto his face.  "Nina," he said, voice heavy with relief.

"Matthias," she said, then paused.  "Matthias, I am starving, thirsty, and still cold, and you can fix all of those things if you come back."

Somehow, she sounded like she did weeks into their first journey together on this ice, voice teasing him to come back to bed just so she could get a little more sleep.  Unlike every one of those mornings, however, this time, he did as she asked. He repositioned her so that she was laying with her back to his chest and he could support her in a sitting position to eat. She could still barely hold the cup as she sipped her water, and he had to tear little pieces of the dried meat off so that she could eat it, but eat and drink she did.   She teased him mercilessly about keeping the pants.

She was still trembling, even laying against him.  The simple act of eating and drinking had worn her out.

"Nina, how are you?" he asked.  He didn't know what to expect; was the worst of it over? Or was this the eye of the storm, only a herald of more and worse to come?

She laid her head back against him, sighing.  "I hurt," she said. "I feel as though I was scampering across ice rooftops all night, which I was, and then as if someone put my whole body through a Ravkan dough roller, which I hopefully wasn’t.  Honestly, I think my cramps have cramps. But I'm better. I can think, at least, although that isn't much of a comfort when I'm just thinking about the pain."

"Can you sleep?" he asked, already crossing his hands over her stomach, pulling her body down into the curve of his own.

"Yeah," she sighed, shutting her eyes.  "I can sleep."

The next time she woke up, night had fully fallen.  She was stronger, inch by inch, but she was still in obvious pain.  She couldn't seem to get comfortable, her face scrunched into discomfort even as she shifted on top of him. Eventually, her shifting across his lap became too much, even for his druskelle training.  he caught her arm.

"Nina," he said, voice strangled, and she finally seemed to notice why he was so uncomfortable.

"Sorry," she said, unremorseful, but she stopped fidgeting.  "I just--I just can't get comfortable. I feel like my heart is going to beat straight through my ribcage.  My head feels like the _parem_ 's knowledge is fist-fighting its way out of my skull, and I can't focus on anything but the pain."

She shifted again, and he growled, using his grip on her arm to pin it to her chest. He felt his thumb brush against the underside of her breast on accident, felt the shiver run through her.  "Oh," she gasped, and he released her arm as if burned.

"Sorry, sorry," he said, scarlet with embarrassment, but she grabbed at his still-hovering hand, her own hand shaking even as her grip was strong.

"Can you?" she said, and he felt the words reverberate through her back and against his sternum, sinking past his ribs and aiming unerringly toward his heart.  She guided his hand below the curve of her breast, across the soft swell of her stomach, down to where his fingers brushed against thick, wiry curls. His hips jerked involuntarily.  "I want you. And I need a distraction. please?"

His breath had stopped the second he'd touched her breast, and he felt his blood rushing downwards with a throbbing, itching ache.  Her head tilted back as she sighed, coming to rest at the junction of his neck and shoulder. He'd thought about this--what she'd feel like, what she'd say.  He'd thought about it a thousand times in a thousand ways, but never like this. "Shouldn't we--shouldn't we--wait?" He said, almost unable to speak, almost unable to think. "For my--our--first time. Can you even--do you even know what you're asking?"

She pressed his hand against her skin. "Yes. It doesn't have to be good, if that's what you're worried about," she said, and he could hear the teasing smile in her voice. For another brief moment, she sounded like her old self. "And i'm saving our real first time for some place with real pillows. This is just--a painkiller. Please, Matthias?"

At the sound of his name, he tentatively scraped his nails through the thick hair his fingers had curled around, smiling at the way her body shivered with delight instead of fever.  Her hand guided his further down her body, until his fingers were stroking at the creases where her thighs met. His other hand came up, almost without his intention, to thumb gentle circles over one of her breasts.  She tilted her head back further against his shoulder, sinking into him, breath coming in shaky bursts. She tightened her grip on his hand, and he gathered all of the courage he had to press one finger into the soft, wet heat of her.  He stroked there, too, the soft walls quivering beneath his fingers, a warm liquid coating his first finger, then his second, all while his thumb moved careful circles over where she had first guided his hand.

"Oh, oh, oh," she kept saying, breath hitching, and he buried his face in her neck, kissing the tender skin there over and over.  "Oh, Matthias, please," she said, and he picked up his pace, tightened his circles and pressed harder into her, suddenly desperate to watch her face as she tipped over the edge.  It was more of a rush than any battle he'd ever fought, any victory he'd ever won. It was more heady and terrifying than sailing into the Fjerdan harbor on a take, just to watch her eyes shutter and her mouth lock into a perfect 'o', to feel her shudder, endlessly, against him.

He pressed another long kiss into the hollow beneath her jaw, so he felt that jaw shift as she took a deep breath and smiled.  He was harder than he had ever been in his life, and he didn't know how to ask.

"I haven't forgotten about you," she murmured, shifting her weight off of his hips.  In a second, she'd managed to reach down and pull his pants down half a foot, scraping his cock with a painful friction.  She pulled her thighs together, still arched over him, and then dropped out of the arch, his cock sliding between the still-wet peak of her pressed-together thighs.  The slick, suden heat was almost unbearable. After, he held her hips up for her, vaguely cognizant of how tired she must still be, and thrust upwards into the tight press of her legs.  After an embarrassingly short minute, he collapsed, at last, spent across the tops of her thighs, and she giggled as she turned more fully into him.

She kissed his nose, his forehead, his lips, and he smiled up at her in a daze.  "Going back to sleep already?" she teased around a yawn of her own, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, too tired to argue.

She kissed him again, and he saw her wink even as his vision started to blur.  "Well, I did promise to kiss you unconscious," she said, sounding smug, and he let himself smile as he drifted off to sleep.  After, he'd said, and he'd meant it. Always.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I finished Six of Crows last night, and I finished writing this fic less than 24 hours later. I would carry these children through Hell and back. 
> 
> (No spoilers for the next book in the series, please!)


End file.
